


Ktenology

by syntheticrealities (orphan_account)



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:11:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2049423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/syntheticrealities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noun: The science of putting people to death. The only exception is, when did the line between science and artistry become so blurred?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Review

_In the many years that I had been practicing my own choice brand of medicine, I have found that by far the most valuable knowledge to be had is that which was gained when witnessing death. In reality, it is a simple enough event within the body. Cells stop respiring. The heart stops beating. Activity within the brain ceases._

His mouth was set into a grim line-a grimace of shame and of disgust. Shame upon himself for writing such things ( _you are a Doctor, not a poet!_ ) and disgust towards the young woman who was reading from the immaculate sheets of notepaper before her. Her eyes flickered upwards in question.

"Shall I go on, Mr Schäfer?"

The crispness of her words rang in his ears. They prompted recollections of memories: images and concepts his mind asscociated with the sound. British. Young. Educated. Naive. Irritating. Another of the seemingly-infinite amount of blonde-haired blue-eyed psychiatric nurses that had visited over the last year. There'd been five now. Each of them claiming to cure him of his ills, break new ground on his sickness. Researching this that or the other. This one was called Olivia. A nice name. He'd had a dove called Olivia when he was younger.

Filtered air cycled in softly through the air ducts. He could taste the disinfectant on it-a familliar smell. In others it provoked a sense of restlessness and discomfort. For him, it was the scent of success.

"Tobias, I asked you a question."

Olivia murmured. Tobias-if that was indeed the name that belonged to the white-clad man in question-briefly wrinkled his nose and shifted in his chair, adopting a posture equally as dismissive and comfortable as the one he had occupied before.

" _Nein- Ihr akzent ist grauenhaft_. And please, do not call me by my name. I am an educated man."

Olivia nodded and smiled complacently. It was meant to be reassuring-proof that she would accept his request even though she knew it not to be true. All it came across as was hollow and pitying. _Like everything else in this damned hospital._

"Very well, Doctor Schäfer. I would like you to tell me, if you are willing, about your notes here. What was going through your mind as you wrote them?"

His eyes flickered across the notes. Page upon page of elegant handwriting, well-spattered with the occaisional dot of an accent or flourish of punctuation. They were the records of a madman and yet in the same breath, the sketchings and musings of a misdirected artist. Of course, Olivia was not able to read between the neat black lines and Tobias firmly resisted the urge to grab her by her fringe and mash her head into the page until she saw it as he did. The gentle clinking of his bindings reminded him of the impossibility of that.

_Perfect behaviour for a whole year. And they still chain me to the table as if I were a rabid dog._

With careful movements, he reached across and turned the pages towards him. Olivia leant away. It was so easy to recall the feeling of the pen tracing across the paper as he wrote-thirteen pages of artistic mastery and logistical perfection. So concise. So clear. So unreadable.

As he drank in the morbidly curvaceous black shapes draped across each other on the paper, a small smirk registered on his face. He could feel Olivia stiffen from across the steel table. _Nerves firing. Adrenaline coursing. Tendons pulling taught. You are getting ready to flee, my dear._

"Now that," he began softly, "is a story I am more than willing to share."

"And why do you choose to partake in therapy now?"

"Because, Miss Olivia Wren, I am broken up inside."

"An important realisation."

"And I would like...Your assistance."

The smile that sweapt onto Olivia's face was full of ice and teeth.

"Assistance with what, Doctor Schäfer?" she purred.

"With curing me of my sins."

"Which are?"

"You know them."

"Yes, but I need to hear you say them."

 _Do you? Do you really?_ Already the bitterness was crashing over him in tides and again there was the urge to push her face into the table, but not gently so that she might see, with a quick, sharp force to drive the brow into the prefrontal cortex and the nose into the sinuses-

Tension visibly lifted from his shoulders and the cords in his neck went slack. She sat forwards, surveying her prey.

"This is important Tobias."

So it was to his lap and cuffed hands that he spoke, wrought all in ten thousand nuances of grey but for the pinks and reds of the blood pulsing under his skin.

"I would like your assistance with curing me of my homosexuality, Nurse Wren, and my homocidal tendencies."

"That is good to hear, Tobias. Would you like to know why?"

"Why?" barely hissed.

"Because doctors are supposed to heal. Aren't they?"

"Yes, Nurse Wren. So what does that make me?"

She smiled again. So many glacial smiles.

"It makes you my patient."

"Yes," he said softly.

"A patient."

 

 


	2. The Hypothesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noun: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.  
> (Note: There are racist and homophobic slurs in this chapter. Please remember that Medic's opinions do not coincide with my own, nor are they cannon)

He had expected the battles to be full of bloodshed. Events dedicated to the eradication and desecration of life. But in reality, such simple words did not cover it. They did not cover the feelings of disgust upon seeing the BLU Soldier devour the heart of their Demoman-the fourth new recruit that week-in front of them. They did not cover the sheer, blind rage he had felt upon seeing the BLU Spy slip his blade inbetween the ribs of the Engineer. He had been a good man, that fellow. Only to become the fodder for some Frenchman's sick killing glee.

The Medic, of course, had long since learned to return the favour. He mutilated bodies where he could. Sullied wounds where he had the oppurtunity. Once he'd even managed to slip enough tranquilizer to knock out a gorrilla into the BLU Sniper's coffee. Suffice to say he wasn't going to be causing them havoc anymore-the new fellow was a pushover, barely out of high school. Pathetic.

And to think, he was expected to keep up with all of it. All the first aid shoved into masses of visceral matter too badly destroyed to make one organ out from another. With the endless tides of fire and shrapnel attempting to nuzzle its way into his adrenaline-frenzied flesh. With the reams and reams of paperwork where he wrote the time of death more often than the date. In Stuttgart, he'd often dismayed at the lack of business at his back-alley clinic. Now, he'd welcome attempts to treat some whore of her chlamydia or pull the bullets from some mafia courier's shoulder. It had been peaceful.

Now he was lucky if he got the chance to do some light reading before unconsciousness took him. Even that had become less and less of an option-the BLU Spy had been getting bolder recently and the Scout had sworn blind that he saw the man skulking about after the battle system was disarmed for the end of the day. Then again, with the amount of irradiated soda that kid drank, it was a wonder he wasn't having hallucinations around the clock.

At the start of it-the war-the team had been close. Friendly, almost. That all went to hell when the first of them died two weeks later. Who had it been? His memory failed him, but faint recollections of the Pyro drifted to mind only to be blurred with images of the Engineer. Either way, since then, RED mercenaries had been dropping like flies. Now the Medic had to check dogtags for names and addresses to make out condolence letters to-he never had the chance to know his team mates outside of battle as they died so quickly. He could do so little. Plasters and bandages and overly large shots of morphine could only do so much for severed limbs, melted eyeballs and intestines spattered with buckshot. So far as he knew, himself, the Sniper and the Spy were the only mercenaries from the original squad still serving. Incredible.

The irony of the Support Team being the ones who had survived and thrived did not escape him. It was simple evolutionism really: survival of the fittest. Offense could not plan for the future. Defense could not adapt and move as easily as Support. So, naturally, Teufort had weeded out the weak and left the strong. It turned out that the best the 9 strong population of the base had to offer were those men who could move about quickly and quietly. They were weakly armed and even more weakly armoured, but the Medic treasured the ace card that without fail saved their lives every day.

What they had was intelligence. Cunning. A sharpness of the mind that put them a cut above the rest. Desirable genes that, were the population capable of reproduction amongst themselves, would have the Support teams running the show in a few short months. Unfortunately , every now and then a trigger had to be pulled. So poorly-bred specimens such as the Soldiers and Scouts (not to mention the Negro abombination that was the Demoman) continued to pervade the population and put a halter on evolution within their precious little biospheres. But with intelligence came potential.

As he sat there, writing reports on this and evaluations of that, a thought crossed his mind. All animals have a weakness. What could we do if we knew the short-falls of the BLU team?

As the sparks of an idea began to form, the words on the pages before him blurred and blurred until he was thinking in equations and logistics instead. A true medical investigation! The thrill he got from that was all kinds of unholy. Without a second thought, he pulled a clean page towards himself and began to write. Equipment lists, methodology, hypotheses, predictions. In the warm, astringent-stained air of the clinic, he began to lay down the framework for what was to become his finest piece of work yet.

It would be brilliant. Armed with the knowledge this could provide, the REDs would be unstoppable. To know the weakness of every man, where he could not parry a blow or what he would break under, that was almost too much power to be held. But then again, when had the thought of too much power ever stopped him?

His plottings were interrupted by loud bellowing from down the hall. It became apparent immediately that Scout had made the mistake of getting on the Soldier's bad side:

"-No, now way in Hell I'm lettin' that skinny bastard get away-"

"YOU WILL CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY, SOLDIER. THAT IS AN ORDER-"

"-No, fuck you! I don't gotta listen to this bullshit-'sides, I've already told the Doc about it-"

"YOU DID WHAT?"

"Yeah suck it up, Jane. I ain't stupid! I'm the only one on this fuckin' team that gives a shit what's goin' on!"

The Medic left his desk and cast a handful of reports over his previous work. He ducked out into the corridor just as the two men passed by the door.

"And what, exactly, is going on?"

A look of pure relief flooded onto the Scout's face even as the Medic fixed him with a steely gaze.

"Oh Doc, tell 'im would ya!"

"Tell him what?"

"About the fuckin' Frenchie creepin' around after hours!"

"Ah yes, you have told me about this. Soldier, I think we have nothing to worry about. I believe Scout here is suffering from substance-induced hallucinations-"

"What the fuck? I ain't hallicinatin'-I saw that slimy bastard not five minutes ago!"

"YOU HEARD THE MEDICAL OFFICER, SOLDIER. SO RETURN TO YOUR BARACKS-QUICK MARCH!"

And so the Scout was frogmarched away by the Soldier before he could bother voicing the rest of his argument. The Medic watched them go and considered what the young man had said. No doubt that the Spy was an erratic figure in his equations-he would have to deal with him first. But to lose such a valuable source of information...How could he dispose of the BLU Spy without losing the intell he carried?

A thought to be considered. Then again, reanimation had always held a sense of appeal for him...

 

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Just a brief idea for something which spawned after a combination of dictionary-trawling and Hannibal feels. I also liked the idea of toying with a TF2 fic wherein the team react and behave towards a homosexual comrade as they would in the time in which the game is set-that is with disgust and disdain. In this fic, I would like to chronicle Medic's reaction to that in all its gruesome and twisted glory. Also, I hope nobody minds the liberties I took with his name!
> 
> ~SyntheticRealities


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